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In activity observed in August 2025, Huntress tracked suspected China-linked operators who used a compromised web server and the legitimate Nezha monitoring tool to help deploy Gh0st RAT. Huntress estimated that more than 100 machines were likely compromised; that is an estimate, not a confirmed victim count.
What is Nezha?
Nezha is legitimate open-source operations and monitoring software. Its agent can give an operator remote visibility and the ability to run commands on a managed server. Huntress reported that attackers deployed the tool after gaining access to web servers; it did not identify a Nezha vulnerability or suggest that ordinary users of the software were implicated.
How did hackers use Nezha in the attack?
Huntress described this sequence in the activity it observed:
- Access phpMyAdmin. The operators reached a publicly exposed, vulnerable phpMyAdmin panel.
- Poison the database log. They changed phpMyAdmin’s language setting to simplified Chinese, then used its SQL interface to enable general query logging. By choosing a log filename ending in
.php, they caused a one-line PHP web shell to be written into the log. The resulting file could be executed through web requests. - Use ANTSWORD. The operators used the web shell to check the web-server user’s privileges and deploy ANTSWORD, another web shell.
- Install Nezha. They deployed a Nezha agent that connected to an operator server identified in the report as
c.mid[.]al. Huntress said the Nezha dashboard was configured in Russian. - Run commands and launch Gh0st RAT. Through Nezha, the operators controlled compromised hosts and ran an interactive PowerShell script. The script created Microsoft Defender Antivirus exclusions and launched Gh0st RAT. Huntress described a loader and dropper in the execution chain.
Nezha was therefore part of the post-compromise control chain: it helped the operators run commands after they had already gained access. The reported entry route was phpMyAdmin, not a flaw in Nezha itself.
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How many systems were affected, and where?
Huntress estimated that more than 100 victim machines were likely compromised. The Hacker News reported that most infections identified in the account were in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, with smaller concentrations elsewhere. The estimate should not be read as an exact confirmed total or a complete map of victims.
Was this confirmed to be a Chinese state operation?
No. The report described the actors as having suspected ties to China; it did not establish definitive attribution or confirm state sponsorship. Huntress’s observations support describing the intrusion activity and its tools, but not a stronger claim about who directed it.
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When did the activity happen, and is it still active?
Huntress observed the activity in August 2025. The Hacker News reported that it had been ongoing since at least June 2025, based on first-seen timestamps of systems connecting to the Nezha dashboard; the activity may have begun earlier. Those observations do not establish whether the campaign continued after 2025.
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This account is based on The Hacker News’ October 8, 2025 report of findings attributed to Huntress. The described phpMyAdmin route is the access method observed in this chain, not necessarily the campaign’s only entry method: Huntress said it had not observed other initial-access vectors in the activity described, but assessed with high confidence that the actors used additional methods.
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